


up on top (and at the edge)

by imochan



Series: Several Small Stories for Tumblr [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M, Snoke Ships It, benarmie, he's a creep, sullen teenage force users
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-26 02:52:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9858833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imochan/pseuds/imochan
Summary: A little birthday benarmie for our beautifulreserve, wherein Ben Solo is left to wander alone on Coruscant and finds something fascinating.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reserve](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reserve/gifts).



Ben sees him first when he is fourteen, taking two weeks of the Yanvin summer with his mother on Coruscant. It is the third morning: Leia treats him to a breakfast in their rooms (he ruins it by being purposefully sullen and grunting at her questions, squashing delicate star-shaped cuts of fruit into pulp with the tines of his fork and refusing to look her in the eyes), and then sighs and sets off to her meetings, leaving Ben to his own devices.

In the empty suite, he flips through the holonews channels, picks at the mess of fruit drying on his breakfast plate, suns himself on the balcony, jerks off half-guiltily in the sonic, takes a dozy and indulgent nap in the crisp sheets of his bed that leaves his mind pleasantly fuzzy on the edges and seems to momentarily quiet the humming grey flurry of ash in the back of his skull.

He thinks about trying to get his hands on a speeder. (He knows he’s not supposed to wander too far, not supposed to charm his way into trouble, but he also knows that lately everyone around him seems perfectly happy to give him a wide berth, and to tend toward expressions of mild disappointment rather than punishment when things go sour, even Luke.) He thinks about leaving, about just _going_ , to try to find with his own body the impossible edges of the sprawling ecumenopolis. Instead, he dresses, tugs the hood of his robes up over his head and walks aimlessly upwards through the shining halls of Coruscant’s agoras, through its covered markets with shops hawking artfully crinkled silks all in the color of gemstones behind transparisteel arcs, its skybound gardens with fountains of clear water on the 4000 levels of the Galactic City skyscrapers, catching glimpses of humming skylanes, of hazy shifting clouds, of the remnants of the Federal District repurposed and stripped of insignia. 

On level 4500, he catches a hydraulic lift to the top of the new Corusca Tower, the liftpod crammed with cooing tourists with overdone hairstyles, somber men in Senate robes, chittering xenos, droids nattering in binary, all while the holopanels of the pod scroll through supposedly enticing images of the Tower’s restaurants, its shops, its mammoth ovoid crown boasting panoramic views of the very top of the old Fed-Di, the clouds, the sky. 

( _Maybe_ , he thinks, in an effort to cheer himself, to ward off the edge of nausea, the encroaching dizziness of too many hours now spent trying to manage the oppressive chatter of millions of other people’s minds, _maybe the edge of the city was never sideways, but up_. He shoves his hands into his sleeves, ducks his chin under his hood.) 

And then Ben sees him the moment the lift doors open. He’s on the far side of the ovoid, by the curved windows. He’s head-to-toe in dark grey, like a uniform, with a shock of close-shorn bright red-orange hair. The color of it makes Ben think of late season sunsets, atmo-afterburn, Thoraline-gas nebulas, flashes of disgusting, overly dramatic poetic imagery he surprises even himself with. The kid looks about sixteen, seventeen, maybe a little older, skinny in the chest and wrists, with shipbound-pale skin and sharp little eyes the same color as the sweeping aqua of the sky spread out behind him.

He’s in the company of a tall, dark-skinned older woman wearing a vaguely military-inflected outfit. They stand close together, her head turned away as she speaks, and the kid has his attention fixed to the datapad in his hands, typing seriously as if taking notes. Ben stands in an alcove by the lift, finding himself suddenly able to ignore the wash of Coruscanti mindchatter, to ignore the dozens of other crowding bodies, to ignore the glittering stupidity of this ancient city trying to disguise its own pain, to ignore his own sulleness and anger—it all drops away like a vacuum, all in favor of this strange, straight-backed boy with a hungry, derisive face. 

He looks, thinks Ben, like a _knife_.

He watches as the older woman says something, and the kid nods with finality, tucking his datapad under his arm. The woman touches him lightly on the shoulder, and then takes off purposefully to the other side of the ovoid—Ben tracks her from underneath the shadow of his hood while she is welcomed by a group of people his mother would probably refer to, with a certain dose of light sarcasm, as _our friends in the Senate_.

The kid settles himself in a low chair by a table, still crowned by the blue of the sky out the window behind him. He crosses his legs at the knee, sits with his spine rigid up against the back of the chair, settles the carefully datapad across his lap—movements to Ben that look so heavily ritualized and controlled that the empty wide space in his chest clenches tight with something like longing, aching for an answer to a question he didn’t know he had buried inside him until now: _where did that come from, why is it like that, what do you get from it._

He tugs down his hood, straightens the folds of his robes, and takes a wide arc through the crowd so he comes up on the kid from behind and to his right, as if he’s just been looking for a place to sit, and the chair right here, by the window, next to this stranger, is the first available option. The kid doesn’t look up from his datapad when Ben sits beside him, doesn’t even seem to notice while Ben adopts his most nonchalant slump, one boot resting against the edge of the low table.

From this angle, from close-up, Ben can see the pale blue veins of his wrists peeking out from the grey sleeve-hem, when the kid flips his hand to thumb at the datapad controls. That empty space in Ben’s chest squeezes in on itself again, and he’s speaking before he can even think to stop himself: 

“Pretty cool, huh?”

The kid blinks, slowly, and then glances in Ben’s direction. He looks stuck somewhere between surprise and outright disgust at the mere fact that he’s being spoken to. 

“Excuse me?”

“I said, ‘pretty cool, huh?’” Ben repeats. He jerks his chin at the curved transparisteel window in front of them, at the glittering spires and expanse of the city below them. “The view?”

The kid does that deliberate blink again. (Ben notices that his eyelashes are the same color as his hair, translucent and orange-gold.)

“What?”

“Uh,” says Ben. “You do speak Basic, right?”

“Enough to suggest that you mind your own business.”

The clench in his chest plunges into cold, hard fury. He feels the grin that had been growing on his lips dissolve like it’s been slapped off his face. “ _Wow_.”

“What.”

“You don’t have to be such a jerk, y’know.”

“Don’t I?”

“No,” says Ben. 

“My apologies, then.” The kid looks and sounds exactly the opposite of _sorry_.

“Whatever.” Ben sniffs, and turns his head away, glaring at the plummeting skyline out the window. Even through the unpleasant roiling disappointment, the mean little surge of anger growing in his gut, he can feel the prickle of attention from his left, where the kid is still looking at him. When he glances back, the kid’s expression has softened, _almost_ , his eyes are slightly narrowed, his brows just drawn together: an imperceptible space of fascination opening up inside him—Ben can feel it through the anger like a quiet little _tap-tap-tap_ against his skull.

“What?”

“What is that ridiculous—hairstyle.”

Ben grabs at the end of the braid where it’s resting against his shoulder, reflexive. “Yeah, I know. It’s dumb.” He flicks it behind him, raises his chin. “Won’t have to have it for much longer, though.”

“No?”

“No.” Ben can feel the _tap-tap-tapping_ , again. He pushes back against it, just to see what might happen. “You’re uh. Not from around here, are you?”

“Are you?” 

“Well, no—but like, you’re _really_ not from here.”

“No,” says the kid. “I’m not.”

“Where from, then?”

The kid drops the edge of the datapad, lets his hands rest against his knees. “You first.”

“Yanvin,” he says, because it’s the simplest answer. “You?”

“You wouldn’t know it,” says the kid. 

“I bet I would,” he says.

“I doubt it,” says the kid. He looks away, to the window. “Never mind.”

In profile, he looks very young. There is an old smudge of discolored skin where a bruise must have bloomed under his jawline. There is a white-pink scar on his temple, barely a quarter-inch long and very thin. He still, even now, vaguely entranced by the view, holds himself like he has been laced up straight into his own spine. He is obviously terrible at having normal conversations. _Where did you come from_ , thinks Ben, with urgency and delight. 

“It is—nice,” says the kid, suddenly. Ben can see his pale eyes tracking the flight of a lux-speeder down below, weaving in-between the pink-lined smog and enviro-filter floaters, the weak sun glinting off the metal plating. “The view.”

“Long way down, huh.”

“Yes,” says the kid.

Ben knows that lately, he has been growing all out of proportion. Shot up four inches in the spring and his hands and feet feel often too large for his limbs, he trips and drops things and does his best to pretend that none of it bothers him. But suddenly here alongside this other boy he feels like none of that is true, like it doesn't matter: he feels strangely strong, oversized like a _man_ , buoyed and powerful, like when the sibilant voice inside his belly and echoing in his skull would sometimes guide his hands during fits of insolence, rage, confusion to make _power_ result where he had only felt helplessness.

“Sort of makes you think about jumping, you know?” When the kid looks back at him, a sudden little spike of confusion on his face, Ben amends: “Not like—not _literally_. Just. You know.”

“I don’t,” says the kid. Ben knows he’s lying; he can feel it growing stronger, the knife-edge going _tap-tap-tap_ inside the bone of his skull. 

“Sure,” says Ben. “Not literally, jumping. Just—the urge. To see what would happen.”

“What would happen,” the boy repeats.

“Yeah,” says Ben. “You know. To just do something everybody thinks you can’t handle. Because you want to.”

The boy holds his gaze, his bright eyes narrowed again like he has just realized Ben isn’t just an insolent kid trying to provide a distraction while someone else nicks his credits, like Ben isn’t just a boring, spoiled Coruscanti troglodyte attempting to impress, like Ben isn’t just another blank face filled to the edges with useless white noise—instead like he’s just realized that Ben might be _interesting_ , that Ben might have something to say, and worth listening to. 

The boy opens his mouth, as if to reply, at the same time that a woman’s accented voice cuts through the crowd—calling: _Armitage?_ —and the boy blinks, his gaze drops, his fingers find their hold on the edge of the datapad again. 

“Well,” he says.

“That’s you?”

“That’s me.”

“Armitage,” he says, trying it out.

The kid—Armitage—looks as though he can’t even muster the energy to roll his eyes as he gathers up his things and stands. “We all have names.”

“Right.” Ben grins. “Sorry about yours.”

“I’m sure you are,” says Armitage, pausing with the datapad clutched to his chest as if maybe he is not entirely convinced the conversation is over.

“Want mine?” he asks.

“No,” says Armitage.

“It’s Ben,” he says. “I’m Ben.”

Armitage looks down at him, mouth pursed. _Tap-tap-tap_ goes the radiating little curl of fascination, inside Ben’s mind.

“Ben,” he says, finally. “Well. It's been very—strange to make your acquaintance.”

“’Bye, _Armitage.”_

Armitage sneers at him, with all the practiced ease of a polite handshake, and he goes.

\--

 _I know him_ , he will say to Snoke, only just a few years later, when he has begun to reveal himself and has started to show Ben a new part of his own future. A glimpse of a tall young man with his bright hair tucked under a dark winged cap, standing on the edge of a gleaming black fighter bridge, his hands clasped in a knot behind the small of his back. Eyes the color of the sweeping Coruscant sky narrowed like in his memories and now full of fire.

 _I know him,_ he will say. _I've met him before._

(He will not say: _I’ve thought about him, sometimes_. He will not say: _I have thought about his mouth, sometimes. About gripping his wrists in my hands and squeezing until the bone shatters. About leaving bruises on his skin._ )

 _Of course you have_ , Snoke will say. _Did you think, my child, that I would not provide for you?_

And Snoke will say: _Did you think that I would ever let you be so lonely again?_

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday, Chloe! xoxoxo


End file.
